Canon Keepers VI: On a Monday, I Was Incested
by JealousOfTheMoon
Summary: Somehow, he got the idea that “PS” didn’t stand for Post Scriptum, Pulling Strings, Purloined Socks, Poisonous Spiders, or Plum Scones. [Incestbashing, nonscripted oneshot, and 6th in a series.]


I guess I'm posting this thing today after all, despite the rather unpromising note on my profile page. I'm spontaneous enough to a point of absurdity, it would seem.

This story is non-scripted prose. I said I'd never do it again. It seems I have broken and will probably continue to break that promise.

My favorite thing about this story—as it is with Canon Keepers V—is that our Magnificent king and Gentle queen are something other than Magnificent and Gentle when they are face with something as abhorrent as what they are faced with in this story. They become very human—to a point of ridiculosity—and I hope I don't seem like I'm mocking _them_. If I come across that way, let me state clearly that I bear no ill will towards said King and Queen, and I love them both dearly. However, I don't believe they're perfect, and I think that what happens in this story would have a truly devastating effect on them. In real life, it would not be so humorous perhaps as I make it out to be here, but hey! This is a humor story, and if I got too serious, no one would read these things.

Without further ado—save for one small dedication and then another in-story note—I present the next installment of the Canon Keepers saga!

_To C.S. Lewis, for creating Eustace; to Johnny Cash, who's song 'I Got Stripes' I so mercilessly mutilated into this story's title; and to EstellaB, for being so absolutely brilliant at making Eustace turn such smashing shades of red._

**Canon Keepers VI: On A Monday, I Was Incested  
**_or_ **The Straw That Broke the Dragon's Back**

_Dear Reader: _

_It is my unfortunate task to unveil the next installment in this series concerning that which occurs here in Canon Keepers, Inc. You see, things aren't always like they are in the stories. In the stories, everything is perfect and beautiful before the villain appears. Of course, we automatically recognize him as the villain due the sudden darkness and ugliness that appears as soon as he enters the scene. But lo and behold - the hero walks in, and BAM! The villain dies or flees town, never to return. However frequently this may _seem_ to occur around this place, more often it happens that the characters—or rather, the Keepers—often discover something that's too much for their stomachs or their minds. In the former case, they wind up in the hospital ward. In the latter, they find themselves…well, where this story is, as a matter of fact, which is why this story happened. _

_My general point being, Canon Keeping isn't waltzing butterflies and skipping bunnies in daisy-filled meadows. The task of a Canon Keeper is dangerous, and sometimes the greatest danger of all is that of being sent over the mind's edge..._

8:15 AM – Fifteen minutes after punching in, Dr. Eustace Clarence Scrubb has already endured enough to constitute a classic Bad Day. First, the new receptionist tittered at his name when he showed his card. Secondly, he received a three-minute phone call from a blubbering Caspian who was going into withdrawal after battling a Lucy/Reepicheep pairing.

As soon as he had hung up on Caspian (he couldn't endure any more of the "andthenLucyblaaaaaaaahhhhandReepgaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhandtheyeeeeeeerrrrrruuuuuuuuuggghhhhhhandIblahahahahahah…"), Edmund rang him up. This was the third injurious incident of the morning: his dratted cousin had told him—with much glee—that yesterday he'd let a Eustace/Jill pairing slide through, because he claimed both pairing and story were "Canonical."

Eustace had hung up on him too.

Fourthly, he had called Lucy and poured out his woes to her, but she had laughed him away, and he was forced to hang up on her. He _never_ did that to Lucy, his most sympathetic cousin. But when she had begun hooting with laughter, he knew there was nothing else to do. After all, who wants to hear their most sympathetic cousin hooting like a banshee until she starts sobbing and gasping "Eustace! Bwahaha—Oh, _Eustace!_—Bwahaha!—Sorry, Eustace—"

Click.

_Sorry_, as if! How would _he _have known that telling her Edmund's theory would have such an effect on her? He probably shouldn't have—come to think of it—but he hadn't expected her to _laugh_. And no, he wasn't in any way upset that she would laugh at the idea of him and Jill having a "relationship"—he did _not_ like Jill, blast it, not _that way_—but it was the principle of the thing.

Beyond that, he really didn't care.

Really.

The fifth thing was that it was Monday, and while all these things should never happen within fifteen minutes of starting work on _any_ day, on a Monday it was simply adding insult to injury. Hitting a fellow when he was down. Rubbing salt into the wound. And a dozen other figures of speech which show a similar sentiment.

'_At least the day couldn't get any worse,'_ he thought glumly. The minute he thought that, all his psychology lessons came back to him and the lectures about irony and thinking one thing only to have it disproved the next moment came back to him. He was about to take that thought back, when—he didn't have to. What happened next simply took it back for him.

8:17 AM – Peter and Susan Pevensie bolted through his office door, both panting and very red in the face. Their eyes appeared to be slightly glazed, Eustace noted while picking up the coat-and-hat rack which had tumbled in their wake. Peter stood, swaying from side to side in a manner which could only be described as odd, while Susan flung herself on the floor giggling and moaning and hiccoughing in a manner that reminded Eustace vaguely of a drunk marshwiggle. Ever so often, she would pound the ground with her fists and feet and mumble: "Respectabeen…er, reen…er, respectaqueen…er…"

To keep the rating down, we shall merely state here that Eustace sat down heavily in his chair and swore loudly. Peter giggled. Eustace swore again. Peter giggled again.

Eustace made a note of that: _Giggles at swear word. Most definitely not normal behavior, as normally Peter would be in his Older-Cousin-Keeping-Younger-Cousin-In-Line role by now. _He looked at Susan, and wrote. _Susan resembling drunk marshwiggle. _

Blasted Monday.

Peter giggled.

_Peter: giggles even when I'm _thinking _semi-expletives. _Eustace noted with not a little interest and even more distaste. Resisting the urge to seize them both by their collars and thump their heads together—he had seen it in a motion picture once, but it was good he didn't try it, for he wouldn't have gotten very far, especially with Peter and their comparative sizes. He tried the verbal approach.

"Now, see here! This is no way for the Sovereigns of Narnia to behave! I don't know what kind of rummy joke you two are getting into, but it is not appropriate for your stations, and _especially_ not appropriate for a Monday morning!"

Susan stared. For half a second, Eustace thought he might be getting through, but then she babbled: "Not a sov…sover…sovren…thingummy. Respect-o-queen."

Peter giggled "rummy!" and made raspberries with his lips. "Bbbbbttbbbttbbbt…"

Eustace ran a finger through his hair. He slouched down in his chair and muttered "blast," sulking like a child. But when Peter mimicked him—'blast! Haha!'—he straightened up, fired by some sudden, new resolve. Seizing his male relative by the wrist—it took both hands—he dragged him into an adjourning room, typically used for private conferences and observation (it had one of those mirror/glass panes where you can look in, but all they see is the mirror). Once he'd accomplished this, he was panting very hard, but he took Susan none too gently and hoisted her from the floor, depositing her into the second room. Then he locked both doors.

8:31 AM – Eustace staggered onto an elevator. You see, he had just dashed up twenty-some flights of stairs, barged into the Executive Authoress' office without knocking, told her off, gotten an even worse telling off in return, and dashed down thirteen flights of stairs. It was at the bottom of the thirteenth flight that he momentarily forgot his anger in the face of his excruciating pain (not that he was out of shape or anything) and hopped onto the elevator. Once inside the elevator, the injustice and horror of his situation came rushing over him like a flood.

_He_, Eustace Clarence Scrubb, had entered the Canon Keepers building thirty-one minutes prior to this, prepared and willing to do a good day's work, and been slapped in the face by a bad day's work.

It wasn't right.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't what he'd been _trained for!_

See, while Scrubb had been fully trained to handle others' psychological trauma, he did a rather bad job of handling his own. (Part of this problem arose from the fact that he wasn't willing to admit the problem!) He had been badly traumatized—giggling receptionists, blubbering Caspians, gloating Edmunds, hooting so-called _friends_ (nothing more), and nervous-breakdown-ist cousins tend to do that to you. All together on a Monday morning, that constitutes a triple-gazoople threat to any decent person's sanity. But Eustace was not ready to admit that he was not quite the Almighty Counselor Person he supposed himself to be.

"Told off by the EA…who does she _think_ she is? …besides the person who runs this whole rotten operation, of course, for all that matters." He fumed, steam and smoke and fireworks coming from his ears (not literally, of course. If it had been literal, several smoke alarms would have been blaring at this point.) "First I'm treated like dirt, and then I'm told to do act like it! Reducing me to a mere consultant Keeper, indeed! Base Canon Keeper-dom! Were my six years of schooling and psychology major for _nothing?_" He was practically screaming, but he was also on the Consulting floor of the Lewis department.

Summoning all his dignity and courage, he stepped out of the elevator, down a hall, and up to a door which read **Peter & Susan Pevensie, Consultants**. This was, of course, Peter and Susan's job when they were not "keeping" in their respective seasons. It really wasn't the base, dirt-like job that Eustace was making it out to be, but in his scorched and withered mindset said cousins were pieces of scum. Doing their job was scum-like as well.

Suffice it to say that Eustace was not very rational at this time. When he opened the door and saw that his clients were, in fact, two young, female teenagers who were wearing the latest styles (which he didn't think much of) which included so much make-up that it must take a large paint brush to apply and an ice chisel to remove, and enough perfume to fog up the air and make him double over from lack of oxygen…

Rationality and Eustace no longer even fit into the same sentence. (That last sentence being, of course, the exception.) Having his position momentarily reduced for the sake of two giggling adolescents was without a doubt the straw that broke the dragon's back.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, taking one of the seats behind the desk rather sulkily, "if I'm snappish or short-tempered, but I've had a rather bad day, and I don't appreciate any of it in the least. You're perfectly rotten to do this to my cousins and thereby cause them to do this to me. Six years of school for _NOTHING!_" He had begun to speak semi-slowly, but as he went on his voice grew more rapid and got higher and higher, so that the "six years of school for nothing" came out as an unintelligible shriek. Needless to say, his consultees were open-mouthed. This seemed to jolt him a bit, for he went on in a more brisk, business-like manner (his face very red upon realizing he was shrieking):

"Well. What can I do for you?"

"Sir," one of the girls began with a nervous giggle (no doubt at the shrieking, Eustace noted, the shade of his face deepening.) "We—the fans of Narnia—believe your land and all the stories about it contained in _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe_ to be lacking in a certain area." She seemed to hesitate here, so Eustace gave what he hoped was an encouraging nod. It was more like a stiff jerk, but that is understandable.

"There's no—no—_romance!_" The other girl burst out with a giggle.

Eustace raised an eyebrow, and nodded as if in understanding or agreement, but in reality he was musing, _'They both look _exactly alike! _How on earth am I supposed to tell them apart?!' _

"The guys are hot enough, and the girls are gee-orj-uss," he winced at her pronunciation, "but they never…"

'…_attempt to swallow each other's heads, mouth first?' _he finished for her dryly—mentally, of course. Out-loud he said, "Fall in love?"

"Yes!" the first girl screamed, and he noted she had bright blue nail-polish.

"Totally!" the other girl screamed. She had bright…orange?...nail polish.

Bingo. A difference. A male-mind-comprehendable difference. Colors, he could handle.

"I mean, like," Blue Girl gushed, "William Moseley is so _hawt!_"

"Mmm-hmm." He agreed. In his mind, he frantically tried to remember who William Moseley was.

"And Anna Popplewell is dreamy too," Orangey bursted. "But they never…come together."

William Moseley, Peter. It clicked. That was that guy Peter had ranted about for three weeks on end. He was the guy who played Peter in the movie. Peter couldn't believe he had to defend the Moseley-chap's character. And Anna Popple-something? Wasn't she why Susan had eaten three gallons of ice cream before they had broken into her apartment and gotten her off the couch? And why? Something about 'never being able to measure up to her Hollywood-ness.' Women. Honestly!

…this coming from the most irrational being currently on the face of the earth, ironically enough.

He snapped back to his thoughts as Blue was explaining further. "So we have a signed petition from 1,567 adoring fans—"

"—actually, it's 1,568." Orange cut in.

"1,567. I counted." Blue.

"1,568. Everyone knows I count better." Orange.

"1,567. I counted _three times._"

"1,568. I counted _four times_, after you counted!"

"1,567. I—"

Eustace seized the paper and snapped, "_I'll_ count them!" This effectively shut up the two, although they continued to send each other murderous glances.

'_Maybe they'll kill each other, and then I'll be off the hook!' _He chortled.

8:53 AM – Twenty-one minutes later, Eustace had begun to count through the thing at least a million times, only to lose count and start all over again. Of course, the four times he did make it to the end, one of the girls always insisted he had missed one or two, and he had to go back just to be sure.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Blue decided she didn't like the color of her nails, and she began to paint them lime green. The stench of nail polish was about to make Eustace swoon.

'_Give me dragon breath any day.' _He moaned inwardly. _'If I ever get out of this place, I swear I'll never laugh at Jill's complaints about what goes on in Women's Dressing Rooms. In fact, I might just marry her." _He blinked. Where had _that_ thought come from?

Maybe he _was_ irrational.

8:54AM – Eustace threw down the paper and gave up. It didn't really matter anyways.

"Look here, just tell me what this is all about." A defeated air ruled his voice.

"Well," Blue—no, Lime Green—giggled, blowing on her nails, "If you'll read it, it says that we have decided that, due to the demand from the populace in general, it is perfectly canonical for Susan to fall in love with Peter and vise versa, thereby giving the whole story a more romantic appeal."

Eustace blinked. From where had that small of a brain procured such large words? He glanced down at the paper. It read: _We the undersigned have decided that, due to the demand from the populace in general, it is perfectly canonical for Susan to fall in love with Peter and vise versa, thereby giving the whole story a more romantic appeal. _

Oy. She had memorized it. Well, that made sense, actually.

Then the weight of what they were proposing came crashing down on him.

"Peter and…_Susan?!_" he gasped.

"And Edmund and Lucy, as soon as we have the petition for that," Orange hastened to assure him.

Oh. That made _everything_ better and more right. Brilliant, there, Orange.

Eustace could be a rather sarcastic being, when he wanted to be, and right now he wanted to.

Apparently Lime Green and Orange decided that his silence wasn't very promising, for Lime Green interjected somewhat tentatively:

"We have examples from 15 of our favorite P/S fic writers—"

"—but no E/L," mournfully spoke Orange, earning herself a glare.

Somehow he got the idea that "P/S" didn't stand for Post Scriptum, Pulling Strings, Purloined Socks, Poisonous Spiders, or Plum Scones.

With an ever sinking feeling, he took the papers and read the examples.

Suddenly, he felt like he was back on the _Dawn Treader_ without his sea legs. He no longer had a sinking feeling, but more of a rocking, rolling, churning-his-stomach.

He felt a very explicable need to regurgitate.

Then the full injustice of his situation rained down on him like so many spears and sharp pointy objects. If he had thought that the prospect of interacting with two dippy fan-crazed teenage girls was the straw that broke the dragon's back, then this was undoubtedly the next straw: the straw that chopped said beast's spine into tiny pieces and stomped it into the ground until it became nothing more than fertilizer.

"Incest," he breathed.

"What?" the girls tittered nervously. Lime Green looked nervous; Orange looked…clueless.

"Incest," slightly louder this time.

"Um…" Their 0.00001"-sized brains weren't picking up very fast.

"Incest," firmly now, with a deadly sort of hardness.

"Err," now they both looked as if this wasn't how it was supposed to go.

"INCEST!!!" He roared. "I-N-C-E-S-T!!! _INCEST_! I WENT THROUGH A GIGGLING SECRETARY, A BLUBBERING CASPIAN, A SNICKERING EDMUND, LOONY COUSINS, TWENTY-SOME FLIGHTS OF STAIRS, A RAVING EXECUTIVE AUTHORESS, THE PERFUME-SMOG AND NAIL-POLISH STENCH OF WITLESS MOVIEVERSE FANS, 1,567-1,568 SIGNATURES, NOT TO MENTION SIX YEARS OF WORTHLESS EDUCATION—" he took a breath, barely noticing said witless movieverse fans edging towards the door. "I WENT THROUGH ALL THAT FOR WHAT?! BLOODY **_INCEST!"_**

Puff! The petition, with all the examples, spontaneously combusted and became no more than a heap of ash. As for the nameless movie fans, perhaps the reader will not be so surprised to learn that nothing was seen or heard of the two unknown movie fans. The front desk receptionist informed Dr. Scrubb—with a giggle—that two blurs passed through, creating a very strong wind which messed up all her papers, but she couldn't be sure of who or what they were. She thought it was the owls making trouble again.

9:14 AM – Eustace prescribed twelve years of therapy for his cousins (he was still slightly irrational, so in reality it only took a week with an hour-a-day sessions, but the prospect of a twelve year "sentence" as he liked to call them cooled his head a bit). He then called Jill and confided his woes in her. She had grace enough not to laugh, which made him appreciate her even more. (But not in _that_ way!)

He conveniently forgot to mention Edmund's tormentuous conversation, however. There were some things, he felt, women just didn't, couldn't, and wouldn't ever understand.

_Finis._

**Last Minute Notes: **On the reference to Lucy/Reep pairing: I have never read any, but I believe human nature capable of all things disturbing and gross, and even if it's never really been written, the thought of it is bad enough. Also—I apologize if someone doesn't particularly enjoy the Eustace/Jill pairing. This is one pairing which I do find canonical; if someone else doesn't…well, I'm sorry. I do think it's something Edmund would tease Eustace about, so I've brought that into the CK Universe.

Thalion King's Daughter – I shall be in touch with you by Monday the next week, or sometime shortly thereafter.


End file.
